


Words, Wide Night

by Idril_Telperien1



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idril_Telperien1/pseuds/Idril_Telperien1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the poem "Words, Wide Night" by the British poet Carol Ann Duffy. Emily Prentiss grieves following the death of her husband.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words, Wide Night

_Somewhere on the other side of this wide night_   
_and the distance between us, I am thinking of you._   
_The room is turning slowly away from the moon._   
  
_This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say_   
_it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing_   
_an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear._   
  
_La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross_   
_to reach you. For I am in love with you_   
  
_and this is what it is like or what it is like in words._

 

Emily stared out of the window at the dark street. Grey clouds had obliterated the slither of moon that was left causing an inky blackness to fall across the world. The window faced out onto the back of the apartment block so only the vague grey outlines of cars were visible. So much grey should have been depressing, but it fit her mood. Everything inside her was grey. The grief councillor Hotch had sent her to see had said that was good; he had encouraged her to use colours to express her emotions. She thought it was ridiculous but did it to keep Hotch happy. Tonight was grey.

Hotch wouldn’t let her go back to work, apparently she wasn’t ready. She wanted to point out that thirty four days off after being stabbed nine times and losing his family was hardly sufficient, but she guessed that would only mean even more time sat at home. She’d tried everything to keep busy but by nine in the morning she was sat on the floor of their bedroom cradling his messenger bag like the baby they never had. The team came round several times to check on her, before she loved them coming into their home but now it just reminded her of the happier times when her husband would keep their guest entertained as she cooked. _I miss you._

 Her heart ached as she thought of their wedding day, _to death us do part,_ when she’d said it she’d meant fifty years in the future when they were surrounded by children and grandchildren. She hadn’t envisaged holding his dying body while they waited for an ambulance that was too late. He’d smiled at her; even as the life left his body his main concern was making sure she was ok. It hadn’t been enough to stop those beautiful hazel eyes from glazing over as his chest went still. She breathed out a shaking breath onto the glass so she could write his name: _Spencer._ It had been fifty seven days since his death and each one stung worse than its predecessor. So much for time making things better.

The phone began jumping wildly next to her on the windowsill but she ignored it. She knew who it was and she wasn’t in the mood to talk. Well, she was but the one person who she wanted to tell about her day wasn’t there. The phone began ringing again but she refused to give in and answer it, even though she knew it would only end with Garcia banging on her door in a bid to get her to talk. But really, what was there to say? He was dead; he was never going to come back. No amount of tea and sympathy would change that face.

She couldn’t face the team right now. At one time they’d been family, the people she was closest too in the entire world, but now whenever she looked at one of them all she could think was, _why wasn’t it?_ She hated herself for it but she couldn’t help it. The councillor said that was totally normal too. She really hated that councillor. The way she sat there with that sickly sympathetic smile on her face, giving out advice that she herself had never had to take. It really wasn’t fair.

There was one thing that kept her going though, one small piece of pleasure that made up for the torture her days had become. Every morning when she woke up, for one tenth of a second she believed everything was as it used to be; her husband was making her coffee the way he did every morning and soon he’d be back in bed cuddling her close. That brief moment was what made her get up in the morning, on the pretext that the next day she’d get the second again. Of course, if that was the best part of her day, what followed was usually the worst: remembering. That hideous crash of realisation that he’d never hold her again was like watching the coffin be lowered into the ground all over again. Not that she ever wanted to stop that moment of forgetting, she honestly didn’t know what she’d do when she spent every waking minute aware that the love of her life was dead.

“I love you.” She told the ghost of her husband who resided in the cracks of her mind, but who seemed to get fainter with each passing day. She pulled the two rings off of her ring finger and twirled them around between her thumb and forefinger. The engagement ring was beautiful; a simple silver band with a circular diamond surrounded by smaller sapphires. It was one of her favourite memories when he’d gracefully dropped down onto one knee and produced a satin covered box from his pocket.

_“Emily Prentiss, every day I wake up grateful that I met you and I cannot bear the idea that we won’t spend the rest our lives together. So please, make me the happiest man alive and become my wife.”_

“I will.” She whispered the words that she had once shouted in ecstasy as he swept her into his arms and kissed her passionately. The phone rang again. She ignored it, preferring to spend her evening watching the black thunder clouds roll across the horizon to blot out the dull grey. Black. That was associated with fear and the unknown; it made her think of the afterlife. Despite her church going days when she was younger she was not particularly religious, and Spencer had always defined himself as a man of science, but that didn’t stop her hoping that there _was_ somewhere out there where her husband waited patiently for her to once again be by his side.

Raindrops began slithering down the window pane like tears. One of them ran past the fading mist where Spencer’s name had been. Cutting the pale remnant in two. Emily opened the window and dangled her hand out, allowing the cold air to cling to her clammy flesh like a vine. Suffocating her. One of the raindrops splashed down onto her knuckle and began rolling down her now bare ring finger until it dangled in a pearly drop on the tip of her white nail. It clung on desperately but, like everything does in the end, it fell away into the black oblivion below.

Suddenly unable to bear the quiet apartment anymore she pulled herself away from the window and headed outside. She didn’t bother with a coat, she enjoyed the rain, it was like an exterior sign of her soul’s bleak pain. No. A thunderstorm would represent it better, but rain would do. For now.  Once she reached the already soggy sidewalk she began walking in a random direction. She had no destination, no one to meet, no one to care where she was or if she was safe. That was a lie, she had her team but their concern didn’t matter to her anymore. Nothing had matter since her lover’s heartbeat ceased. Everyone else she encountered as she walked was racing to get somewhere dry, shrieking as fat rain droplets smashed down on their foreheads like miniature bombs. But not her, she lapped up the invasion of the water. It reminded her of a cold brace she had shared with Spencer on their honeymoon after a late night swim; the memory made her blush as warmth spread through her. Her face paled again almost instantaneously when the hidden memory of her husband’s cold dead body in the morgue, forced itself to the forefront of her mind.

She quickened her pace, not because she was cold but because she wanted to outrun that memory. She couldn’t. No one can. But she continued running anyway, trying to run into the black abyss where he waited for.

Back in the apartment the phone continued ringing, waiting hopefully for someone to pick it up.

No one ever would. 


End file.
